May 30, 2004

• More than one thing on my plate today…

  I had a blog in mind, a first draft for something that will be edited later for inclusion in the FAQ collection at KaiOaty
  but as often happens, when I got here I found comments I want to
  respond to.  I’ll do that first, post it and then work on the
  Tarot blog.

  RaLuvsMeat got a healthy laugh out of me with this one:

  I’m
  sure quitting narcotics was TOTALLY worth it once you got a
  glow-in-the-dark keychain.  Augh, do they think you’re five years old??

  What makes it really funny is that Bill W., one of the founders of AA,
  called the program a “spiritual kindergarten.”  Many, probably
  most, of the drunks and dope fiends at those meetings Greyfox and I
  attend enter the programs without a spiritual foundation and with an
  emotional IQ that would make most healthy five-year-olds seem
  mature.  Intellectually, many of us are above average, but
  spiritual neglect and emotional damage often lead to drug use, just as
  the lifestyle of a hard-core addict leads to more emotional
  damage.  At meetings, I see and hear many signs of emotional
  immaturity… but I pick up on that here on Xanga, too, as well as just
  “out there” in the world.  It’s everywhere.

  Both programs seem to make a big deal out of the tokens given out to
  mark milestones:  24 hours, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months,
  nine months, a year, 18 months (in NA, but not AA), and multiples of
  years.  Probably not coincidentally, the “critical periods” of
  sobriety, when people are most likely to relapse, come at 30 days, 60
  days, etc.  In AA, they give medallions, coins, called “chips”,
  which are carried concealed in keeping with the tradition of anonymity
  (to a lot of AAs, anonymity is synonymous with secrecy).  I’ve
  never seen an AA baseball cap, jacket or t-shirt, but NA has them, and
  the NA tokens are plastic tags with a key ring attached.  Some
  members choose to keep theirs concealed, while others show them off
  proudly.  I let mine hang out.   I’ve mentioned before that
  if I could afford an NA jacket, I’d wear one.  I keep hoping to
  find one in a thrift store.

  zera wrote:

  This
  is more than I wanted to know.  My question would be, do you do things
  because you genuinely want to do them or do you do things out of guilt
  and fear that someone won’t like you.  If someone can’t pick up their
  own clothes, then let them lay.  Step over them or on them.  It isn’t
  your job to pick up after another adult who obviously wants you to do
  that.  (Speaking from experience here.)  Life is too short to let other
  peoples “things” get you down.  Do what gives you joy and peace and the
  “heck” with the rest.

  Well, zero, what made you think I wrote it for you, or that you had to
  read it?  To answer your question, neither A option nor B option
  fits.  I’ll take option C:  I often do things I’d prefer not
  to do because they need to be done, but never out of guilt.  As
  for fear, I’ve transcended my fears of death, of public speaking, of
  fire, snakes, spiders and men.  I got over caring whether anyone
  liked me or not, over thirty years ago, when I went through
  therapy.  I like myself, so what does it matter what anyone else
  thinks of me?

   I’ve seen your name in my comments before, and so I must conclude
  that you’ve either forgotten who I am or you habitually read and think
  superficially and so have never found out who I am.  “More than
  you want to know,” could by my tagline here.  “In your face,”
  “take it or leave it,” “like it or lump it,” are also
  possibilities. 

  Perhaps you were reading things into my blog that I didn’t put there,
  projecting some of your own attitudes onto me.  That’s the only
  way I can understand that bit about letting “other people’s ‘things’
  get you down.”  Did I really seem “down” about that?  I was
  UP, ready to confront my partner on his NPD, which is what I have
  contracted to do in this therapeutic relationship.  I don’t do
  that because I like doing it, either, but I am very glad that I have
  the skill and strength to do it, because it needs to be done and there
  is no one else in a position to do it.  In that way, it is similar
  to some of my other volunteer work, such as driving the rehab van or
  holding the two NA service positions I hold.  When someone comes
  along to take that work off my hands, I’ll step aside.  Meanwhile,
  I’m on the job.

  The only thing that gets me down at all any more is this damned
  disease, the myalgic encephalomyelopathy / chronic fatigue
  immunodysfunction syndrome that makes simple little tasks turn into big
  chores or impossible feats.

  If you had bothered to read and understand that blog, you’d know that I
  could not step around the mess.  I had made the mess because, in a
  confined space, I brushed against his pile of clothes and knocked it
  down.  To me, it is ludicrous even to consider walking ON a mess I
  made, even if I’d made it by springing a trap set by someone
  else.   That would be immature, destructive,
  counterproductive to my goal of keeping order in this space I inhabit.

  I find it laughable that you advise me to “Do what gives you joy and peace and the ‘heck’ with the rest.”  To hell with that shit!  That
  is the way of the irresponsible coward, not my way.  I enjoy
  fixing things that aren’t right, and my self-esteem would suffer if I
  just turned my back on a mess or made it worse by walking on it. 
  Also, I find joy in many things that are not peaceful at all–”joy and
  peace” are not necessarily a pair for me.  Inner peace often comes
  at the price of outward, interpersonal conflict.  Did you ever
  notice this in my left module?

  “Courage is the price
  that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not,
  knows no release from little things.”
  —Amelia Earhart—
  

  Can you even begin to understand someone who would seek a challenge and
  take pleasure in conflict?  That’s me.  I don’t do conflict
  for its own sake–don’t get me wrong.  I confront bullshit, chaos
  and pathology.  I don’t bang my head against brick walls,
  either.  I stand up to bullshit and shout it down.  The joy
  comes when the bullshit stops, when I see the light of comprehension
  and know I have helped someone transcend delusion or denial.  I
  would get no joy from “walking over or around” my husband’s personality
  disorder, and he would get no healing if I did it that way.

  I take pleasure and satisfaction from facts such as these:  NPD
  has a very poor prognosis because there is no drug treatment for it,
  the patients often walk away from talk therapy because their disorder
  hurts others more than it hurts them, and therapists often quit because
  the patients are such assholes.  My husband is not walking out on
  me because he’s just crazy, not stupid.  I’m not quitting because
  I’m winning.  We are seeing results.  Sure, if I were an
  insecure little nonentity who needed a man to validate and coddle me,
  I’d be miserable in this relationship.  But I’m not.  I’m an
  old soul with a strong karmic bond to a man who challenges and inspires
  me to ever greater achievements.  That works for me.

  Oh, and by the way, life may seem short when viewed from your
  perspective.  I’m coming up on sixty years old in a few months
  (that’s this lifetime–I recall many other lives from up to thousands
  of years ago), and from here life looks looong.  In my experience,
  the most common usage of that phrase, “life is too short to…” is as
  an excuse not to do something.  I don’t need excuses.
  
  

  • 6:39 pm
  • 5 Comments